External maxtor isn't recognized on XP

I pluged in the maxtor into the usb, downloaded the latest drivers, and device manager shows it with the yellow question mark and says can not start. it will not show up in 'my computer' as a external drive at all and now i've got drives lights blinking a strange sequence. bottom line maxtor will not open and a lot of information I need is on that drive

Since you have important files on this drive, do not waste a lot of time with troubleshooting. If your drive is about to go out, you can put it over the edge that way and kill it.

Just to be sure, I would plug the drive into 1 other computer just to make sure. If you get the same thing, the problem is definently with the Hard Drive.

If this is the situation, I would take off the outer case to reveal the regular hard drive inside. You can hook this hard drive up to your computer as a slave and copy the files off. If your computer will not read the drive as a slave, and you have double checked the jumper settings and cable position.....you can try a program like "Get Data Back" to try and recover data off the bad/corrupted hard drive.

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if your computer came with a motherboard disc the drivers could be on it click start control panel administrive tools ,computer management ,device manager look through all of your devices if you see a yellow question mark?or exclamation mark ! or red xright click to reinstall drivers or if you can see your usb but its not workingports(com&lpt)right click update driver just replace the cable of the hard disk, when you plugged the external disk drive you got that windows could recognize the USB device change the cable everything should work fine again, sometimes the wires inside the cable will be damaged due to bending or stretching or placing heavy equipment upon the cable,check the USB leads that attach to the motherboard usually red-white-green-black make sure they are securely seated and have no dust build up on them dust will cause static and a lot of unforeseen problemshope this helps

go to your device manager under xp its right lcick my computer-properties-devicemanger. check on the bottom your usb settings if there is a red or yellow marking you may need to re-install your chipset drivers. or download generic usb generic drivers. let me know if this helps

If plugged in the first time, the external drive needs to be initialized from your computer. Here are the steps.

1. Plug in your external drive to your computer's usb port.2. Right click your My Computer and choose Manage.3. Click on the Disk Management from the left. The list of available drives will show on the right.4. Right click on your External drive and select create partition (primary partition). 5. After that you now you need to format the hard drive. Choose quick format.6. Right click again on the partition you've just created, now select "Format" and select NTFS.7. Click Ok and follow the wizard as it will guide you until it is finished.

The USB Isn,t supplying/providing enough Power to the device.
Search e-bay or similar for a 2 into 1 USB Cable.
Then power the unit with 2 USB Ports on the Computer.
2 x USB Into 2 x Sockets On P.C. 1 x Into Device Drive.
This will be enough power to operate the Device Correctly.